


Living the Honest Life

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-18
Updated: 2006-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've come a long way from the hospital, late summer, the ache in his throat that was as much rope as grief, the shame and despair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living the Honest Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Wilby Wonderful story. Thanks and love to the_antichris for beta reading.
> 
> Written for Rrain

 

 

There is some part of Dan Jarvis that can't help thinking _you're really asking for it by being here_ , but like the foreboding voices that tell him it's only a matter of time before his tires are slashed, or before something dead or poisonous shows up in the mail, and like the softly hissing memory of his ex-wife's curses, he is determined to shake it. He lived a lie for so long, like a stage actor, and as Duck asked, _why go to all the trouble?_ But living honestly -- happily -- doesn't come easy, not for Dan. He's out of practice. Duck ... Duck is something else. Duck wears joy well: easy, relaxed, like a pair of well-worn and well-loved jeans, riding low on his hips. And it's Duck that draws him out on this crisply cold December evening, to the Wilby Elementary School playground, with its silver slides and metallic monkey bars glinting, reflecting the light from the snow on the ground, from the moon, from the sun on the other side of the planet.

It's a good place for Duck, this playground, because there's something pure and childlike about the man Dan has come to live with and to love: something only Dan gets to see. To the rest of the world, Duck is something wise and worldly, almost ancient, as much a part of Wilby as the land itself. And Dan loves that part of him -- the part of Duck that lets Dan know that as long as he sticks with Duck, despite everything, he is safe here and he can _belong_ here -- but he loves the innocence, too.

They've come a long way from the hospital, late summer, the ache in his throat that was as much rope as grief, the shame and despair. The day he left the hospital under Duck's watchful, patient eye is like a dream to him now. He was weak and his voice was like steel wool, but beneath the physical maladies he felt dizzily euphoric. He'd lived. He'd cheated death and he'd lived. Blackness had surrounded him, overtaken him, nearly swallowed him whole. He should be dead, by all rights he should have been dead, but he'd _lived_. When Duck got Dan in the cab of his truck and politely asked if he should take Dan back to the old Wildwood Motel, Dan gave him an incredulous look, laughed hoarsely but sincerely, and then wrapped his hand around the back of Duck's neck and kissed him on the mouth, in the middle of the hospital parking lot. Days earlier, he wouldn't have had the courage, and he regretted it almost immediately -- too much, too fast, and just because the whole island knew he was one of the queers from the Watch didn't mean Duck had to suffer the same fate -- but when he pulled back, an apology on the tip of his tongue, Duck was smiling sweetly, mouth and eyes both closed, oblivious to anyone around them who might have seen.

They didn't even know each other -- in fact, they knew next to nothing about one another. But Dan would find, with surprising pleasure, that the quiet, sad-eyed man from the Watch was more than just an anonymous, long-desired body. The first night, after the hospital, after the parking lot, Duck had taken him back to his home, instead. That first night in Duck's bed, they listened to the chirp of crickets outside and hardly slept for talking, learning each other until dawn between kisses and interludes of warm, safe skin.

Duck, as it turned out, was hard not to love.

At times that first night, and over the following weeks, Dan felt like a teenager, pulsing with nascent lust and desire. At other times, he felt like a child, with childlike fears and childlike trust. The trust was hard, painful, like ripping off a bandage, but it was the only way to move forward. Dan's new world was frightening, but Duck was used to its shadows and dangers -- and its pleasures. Sometimes Dan felt ashamed that Duck, who had lived on the island his whole life, knew so much more than he did. More often, he felt good: searingly, achingly good. And outside of what he tentatively began to call _their_ bedroom, he felt nothing but relief for Duck's intimate familiarity with the people and the land of Wilby Island. Duck was like his human passport: validating Dan's presence by his own.

So if anyone should stumble by the school tonight and find two fags cavorting on the playground in the middle of December, maybe having Duck around will excuse them both. Duck belongs there, even at his age, even at night. There is something in his demeanour that makes him as native to the playground as the old swing on which he sits, his feet trailing through the powdery snow. Duck is rooted there, as deeply as the trees.

But Dan isn't entirely rootless anymore, not like he was last summer. There are signs that he, too, belongs in Wilby, and he collects them like photographs: yellow flowers in the hospital from Sandra Anderson and her daughter, a greeting for Duck passed on through Dan from Earl Howe at the grocery, and Carol French, still wracked by residual humiliation and self-loathing, making good on her suggestion that the mainlanders "get together" by inviting both Dan and Duck to dinner. Privately, Dan thinks the cautious welcome might have more to do with the locals fearing the loss of the island's best and cheapest handyman, but Duck takes them at face value, and out of respect for him, Dan tries to see only the positives.

Still, Dan's only human, and he knows what small towns and even big cities can do to men like them. He knows enough to have run from that life -- from his own life -- for decades, and he knew enough last summer to choose the grave over exposure. He still looks over his shoulder from time to time, and despite himself, he keeps on waiting for the axe to fall. It's never been sunshine and roses. He's not oblivious to the looks they get sometimes, and he knows the clientèle at the video shop has changed. Six weeks ago, Duck's mailbox was knocked right off its post, bashed in and so mangled that they'd had to buy a new one. The knowledge that next time, it might not be just a mailbox -- that it might be a car window, a house window, a human being -- sometimes wakes Dan up in the middle of the night, his heart tight in his chest. It's the knowledge that makes him wonder sometimes, mostly to himself, if they should just move. Halifax isn't far.

But on nights like this, Halifax might as well be light years away, and that's fine with Dan. He revels in the sight of Duck, haunting his old childhood stomping grounds like a ghost in the moonlight, gloved hands wrapped around the swing set chains, heavy boots dragging trenches through the snow. Duck's eyes are gleaming and he's wearing the quiet, closed-mouth smile that speaks to Dan of second chances. This is Duck's home, and although Duck hasn't always lived here, Dan can't imagine him really thriving anywhere else. And Dan can't imagine himself without Duck now -- can't imagine not loving something so integral to who Duck is -- so he finds himself accepting the risk. Because Wilby is tough -- hard winters and precarious people -- but it's also wonderful, just like the signs say, and just like Dan wants the rest of his life to be.

 

 

 


End file.
